by Pat Esden
Right in front of my face, a gutted sheep hung from a beam. Blood trickled out of it and into a basin filled with glistening intestines.
I covered my mouth and nose with my hand and swallowed the urge to vomit. The sheep didn’t just look gutted. Its hide was mangled. Snapped ribs protruded at odd angles, bloody and raw.
A yard away, Chase stood with his back to me. His neck shone with sweat. Blood coated his hands and speckled his arms. He grabbed a rag and wiped it slowly across his knife’s blade, meticulously, lovingly.
With my heart in my throat, I took a step back, then another. Maybe this was the normal way to butcher sheep—but I doubted it.
Chase slid the knife into a holster that jutted from the back of his jeans, then wheeled to face me. “You enjoy spying on people.”
My eyes went deer-in-the-headlights wide. “No. I—ah.”
I dropped my gaze and found myself staring at his low-slung beltline. Quickly, I looked up, past his blood-streaked T-shirt and his scarred collarbone to his steely eyes. This definitely hadn’t been one of my brighter ideas.
I squared my shoulders. “I couldn’t put off talking to you. Something happened. Can—can we go someplace—less bloody?”
For a long second, his eyes burned into mine, an unfamiliar and unnerving stare that I couldn’t begin to read. I clutched my bag tighter. He could be so sweet and just being near him made me want to jump his bones. But that chilling look and hard-edged body didn’t come from working out at a gym or by spending his summers sailing. I had the feeling whatever he’d been through before he got here had toughened him more than I’d realized, inside and out.
Chase jerked his head at the far side of the barn to where the rest of the sheep had clustered around an old bathtub overflowing with water. “Let me shut off the hose. Then we’ll go to the cottage.”
With his back to me, Chase stripped off his T-shirt, then rinsed the blood from his arms and neck with the hose. He grabbed a flannel shirt that lay near the bathtub and flung it on. Without taking time to button it, he turned and marched toward me.
When he got close, his pace slowed. He lowered his eyes and his voice softened. “Sorry I got angry. I can’t stand people sneaking up on me.” He glanced at the gutted sheep. “When she was born, I had to bottle-feed her for weeks. After I left you and Zach, I found her like this. Mutilated. It isn’t right.”
I opened my mouth to ask what happened.
But he cut me off. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chase followed close behind me as we left the shed and went down the path to his cottage. He opened the door and, as he stopped to let me go in first, his hand pressed the small of my back. “I’m glad you trust me,” he said.
My knees locked. I wanted to overlook his toughness, his secrecy, his fondness for knives and everything I’d seen in the shed just now. I wanted to trust the fluttery feeling deep inside of me and think only about the caring things he’d done for me. But I didn’t want to be stupid, either. For heaven sakes, he’d even warned me about himself.
Folding my arms across my chest, I turned and faced him. “I promised to tell you the truth, and I need your help. Just don’t make me regret this.”
Chase pushed past me. “Take a seat. I’ll be right back.” He strode through an open doorway and into a room at the back of the cottage.
I eyed the couch, covered with an unzipped sleeping bag and flat pillows. I made my way past a coffee table to a saggy recliner. From there, I’d have a clear path to the door, if I needed to run.
“Want something to drink?” he called.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping it would buy me a minute to compose myself and check out the rest of the room.
There were free weights and other exercise equipment in one corner. A whetstone, greasy rags, a few hunting magazines on the coffee table. There were no books or pictures or knickknacks of any kind. There weren’t any guns or electronics, or a television, either.
I scanned the room again. The night Dad and I’d arrived at Moonhill, there’d been the blue glow of a television coming from the cottage. Maybe he’d sent it out for repairs.
Chase came back with a bottle of orange soda in each hand and gave me one.
He sat down on the edge of the coffee table, his knees nearly touching mine. “So, what’s this about?”
It was now or never. I took my phone out of my bag. “I was hoping you could translate something for me. It’s an inscription on a ring that Dad had. It’s important, seriously.”
He laughed. “You’re asking the wrong person. Try Zachary. The kid knows a dozen languages. Or the Professor, he’s a whiz too.”
“It’s Arabic, kind of.”
“Oh.” He set his soda on the floor and held out his hand. “Let me see it.”
I pulled the image of the inscription up. But as I started to hand Chase the phone, my eyes lit on his collarbone scar. I could only see part of it sticking out from under his unbuttoned shirt. But it had the exact same jagged shape as the letters on the ring. And it wasn’t a scar. It was wider than a mark a knife might make and uneven, like it was burned into his skin above his collarbone.
I yanked the phone away. “He belongs to them,” Dad had said about Chase.
It wasn’t a scar.
It was a brand.
Chase’s eyes were hot on mine. He snatched the phone and looked at it.
Unable to think, I watched, waiting for him to make the first move.
His face went rigid. He touched the brand. “Yes. I know what the inscription says. And yes, its first word and my mark are the same. But you already guessed that.”
“No, at least, not until now.” My hand trembled as I opened the soda and decided what to ask first. “What language is it?”
His lips tensed. “It’s an ancient form of Arabic. A distant cousin to Sabaean.”
Silence hung between us, tense and thick, as he once more stared at the phone. His cheek twitched.
“Chase?” I said. “I don’t get it. You’re trying to learn modern Arabic, but you can translate a weird sixth-century form with ease.”
I set my soda on the table next to him. Despite the fact that I was certain he could snap my neck in a second, despite him working for the family, and a bunch of other things, I was certain he’d been honest with me. So I decided to trust the flutter—and him.
“I’m scared, Chase. There are strange things going on around here. But more than anything, I’m terrified for my dad. I saw how you looked at him the night we arrived. I know you don’t like him for some reason. I need you to tell me the truth. I’ll tell you all I know about my mother’s death, and I know more than I did at the mausoleum. But I have to know what the inscription says and how you can be so sure.”
For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. Just when I was beginning to think he wouldn’t answer my questions, he ran his hand over his head and sighed. “You won’t like what I have to say.” His voice was low and for the first time since I met him, nervous.
I rested an encouraging hand on his arm. “Tell me.”
“English is my first language, or it was when I was little and lived not far from here. But then I was taken from my mother.” He paled and glanced at the phone. “This is my first language now, at least when it comes to writing.”
“That doesn’t make sense. It’s a dead language, right?”
“Not exactly.” Chase got to his feet. “I’m assuming your father got sick after he bought the ring?”
“Yeah.”
“Earlier, you asked me to promise that you wouldn’t regret telling me the truth. That’s a promise I can’t make. I have my own regrets and debts.” He tucked my phone in his pocket. “We have to show this to your family.”
For a moment, utter frustration stole my ability to say anything. On one level, I knew he was right. Then, anger boiled out of me. “Chase, they lied to Dad about how my mother died!”
He turned away and headed for the door. “We’ll take your car.”
> Grabbing my bag, I rushed after him and snagged his arm. “All right. Fine. I’ll go with you. We’ll show it to them. But first, tell me what it says.”
All emotion drained from his voice. Though his body stood in front of me, it was as unreadable as if his soul had gone into hiding. “The slave is the master and the master is the slave.”
The words jumbled in my head, nonsensical and at the same time horrifying. The slave is the master. “What does it mean?”
“Your father is possessed, Annie. But no Christian priest can free him. Let your grandfather explain the rest. It won’t be easy to accept.” He rested his fingers against my cheek. “I really am sorry.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of his touch as fear and worry chilled me to the bone.
“I don’t hate your father,” Chase said quietly. “That night when you arrived, he drew something on the car window.”
My mind went back to that moment, Dad drawing jagged lines on the misted glass. My eyes flashed open. “Your mark.”
He nodded. “Your father recognized me that night. But I’d never met him before.”
“Chase?” I let my eyes find his. “I won’t ask anything else. But your mark, it’s a brand, right?”
“It marks me as their slave, Annie. A slave to things like what’s inside your Dad.”
CHAPTER 16
Hecate, Queen of the Sky, Protector of the Gateways,
of earth, heaven and sea.
—Invocation to the Goddess
Once we got to the Mercedes, Chase used my phone to call Kate. He explained about the inscription and asked her to find Grandfather and meet us in the study. Then, as I steered the Mercedes away from the cottage and started up the hill, he slouched back in the passenger seat.
I wanted him to start talking again, to reassure me he was no longer a slave. More than that, I wanted to know who or what he was talking about. A creature that a Christian priest couldn’t exorcise. An ancient form of Arabic. The thoughts twisted in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry about the sheep,” I said, hoping a temporary shift in subject might draw Chase from his silence.
He shook his head. “I told your grandfather and Kate about your father’s drawing. They thought I was imagining things. You know, they thought I was being paranoid.”
“I can see how you might be. It must have been horrible. A slave, it’s hard to believe. But you escaped, right?” My fingernails dug into the steering wheel as I gathered my nerve. “Chase, you have to tell me, what kind of things or creatures are you talking about?”
“I can’t. I owe Kate and your grandfather that much, and a lot more. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be free, Annie.”
Silence settled around us again, but this time I let it win.
When I pulled the Mercedes up to the front door, Chase leapt out and barely waited for me to follow him before he strode toward the study.
Kate was waiting in front of the fireplace. While Chase handed her my phone, I settled down on the settee next to Grandfather. I wasn’t about to stand up through this discussion.
After a moment, Kate let out a long breath. She gave the phone to Grandfather, and I helped him enlarge the inscription so he could get a better look.
“Who else has seen this?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “Dad, of course. A guy I know who’s an intern at the Metropolitan Museum, his supervisor—who claims the ring was stolen from the Met—and the woman I sold the poison ring to. Dad’s lawyer knows about the inscription, but I don’t think he has a copy of it.” I hesitated, then added, “Wouldn’t he have given it to you if he did? He is your spy, right?”
Kate snorted. “Spy? That’s a bit melodramatic. Yes, he works for us. But it’s not like your father wasn’t fully aware of it.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “Dad would never have allowed that. He never wanted anything to do with the family.”
“Not us, perhaps. But he didn’t lose his fondness for our money.”
Grandfather glared at Kate. “All right, that’s enough.” He turned toward me, his gaze still unyielding. “Kate’s not lying about the lawyer. He deals with legal and financial matters for us and your father. Your father may not have wanted to have anything to do with the family directly, but the lifestyle and advantages you grew up with wouldn’t have been possible without the supplemental income from his legacy, an income source you apparently were unaware of.” He raised a finger to emphasize his next point. “That, however, is not the issue at hand.”
Chase came away from the fireplace, like he’d been waiting for the chance to jump in. “Now do you believe me about the drawing on the window?” he said to Grandfather. His voice was solid, but he lowered his eyes like a humbled servant.
“We didn’t totally disbelieve you before,” Grandfather said to him. Then to me, “We honestly believed the problem stemmed from the church purchases—until you mentioned the shadows in his room and your father’s worsening condition. We haven’t had an issue like this for over a decade. Whereas we quite often run into Christian demons and their ilk.”
Frustration got the better of me. I jumped to my feet. “Fine, I can accept all that stuff you just said about the lawyer and the legacy. But stop with the vague statements. Tell me what’s going on. Christian demons, their ilk, inscriptions, supposedly stolen poison rings that aren’t really poison rings. The shadows. A thing inside my dad.”
Grandfather raised an eyebrow at Kate.
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I was against this from the start, but now that James is here and other things are out in the open.” She pinched the bridge of her nose like she was staving off a headache. “Stephanie is one of us.”
Grandfather smiled at me. “Indeed, she very much is.” He motioned to the seat next to him. “Sit.” He frowned at Kate and then at Chase. “For that matter, why don’t all of you sit? Let an old man stand up and pace around like he’s the king of his own castle for a change.”
Once everyone was seated, Grandfather handed the phone back to me, then positioned himself with his back to the fireplace. “The poison ring, Annie, is actually a seal of sorts, a perversion as it were of the Ring of Solomon. Are you familiar with it?”
“I’ve heard of it. Solomon was in the Bible, right? But the inscription is in Arabic.”
He stroked his chin. “I know nothing about the sort of spiritual education your father gave you. But I assume he taught you to keep an open mind. Respecting all religions has been the backbone of our family, for each spiritual path has its own elements of truth.”
I nodded. Actually, I could now see how all our trips to museums and historic sites, churches and temples, reenactments, and all of Dad’s lectures about culture and civilizations had centered on that very point.
“That being so,” Grandfather continued, “it’s easy to understand that there are places besides Heaven and Hell, that Adam and Eve and the snake were not the only beings present in the Garden of Eden. Other powerful creatures were cast out that day as well, and another place most Christians do not speak of was created: the realm of the djinn. Beings made of smokeless fire, powerful, conniving, and with free will just like God gave to human souls. Beings, some of whom can only appear in the form of shadows.”
The air crushed out of my lungs as I gasped. “You’re talking about genies?” If Grandfather hadn’t sounded so deadly serious and if anyone else had cracked a smile, I might have laughed. But instead, terror—as real as my fear of the dark—closed in around me. Some of Dad’s most horrifying stories had involved Moonhill’s cellar and the jars full of genies that were kept there, like an army of deadly preserved tomatoes or pickles.
Kate pursed her lips. “We’re not talking Disneyland genies. The Devil doesn’t even cross the border between his realm and theirs. But the djinn dream of one thing: claiming our world.”
The whole idea was so overpowering that I could barely begin to
comprehend what they were saying:
The djinn were real.
One of them had possessed Dad.
Chase was marked as their slave, but had somehow escaped.
As if he sensed me thinking about him, Chase added, “If your family hadn’t helped me escape and given me a safe place to live, I’d still be imprisoned in their realm, or dead.”
I pressed my palms against my cheeks. This was all so unbelievable—and it explained a lot, but there was so much more. I turned to Grandfather and steadied my voice. “So—so you’re saying the ring somehow allowed my father to be possessed, by a genie?”
“To a degree,” Grandfather said. “My best guess would be that the poison ring, like the lamp in the Tales of the Arabian Nights, held a genie. I suspect the genie fully intended to end up in your father’s hands and to trick your father into allowing himself to be possessed.”
I scowled. “That’s ridiculous. The last thing Dad would have ever wanted was to become ill and be forced to move back here.” I clamped my mouth shut. That was pretty rude.
Kate glowered at me.
Grandfather continued like I hadn’t spoken at all. “The djinn are devious, and they’ve spent eternity spying on mankind, studying our weaknesses. We won’t know for certain what happened or how to rectify this situation until we look into it further and do a bit of research. It’s likely the ring and its inscription can be used to control the genie, but not while he’s inside your father. If your father allowed the possession, then it won’t matter what religious prayers or tokens we try. The exorcism will not succeed.” He cocked his head at Chase. “Kate said you found a mutilated sheep.”
“Near the graveyard.” He rubbed his collarbone. “It was ripped open and the heart was missing. It looked like their handiwork to me.”
A sick feeling churned in my stomach and I hugged myself as an image of Chase wiping off his knife flashed through my mind. I didn’t think Chase was lying about who mutilated the sheep. Still, it didn’t make sense. “Dad wouldn’t have done that. He loves animals.”